Why does the perfect kiss remain at the heart of every romance?

Tongue trading may not serve any evolutionary purpose, but the perfect kiss with the right partner remains at the heart of every romance, says Andrea Mara

WHEN you think about it, kissing is a slightly odd thing to do. Most of us regularly pucker up to kiss our partners’ mouths, our friends’ cheeks and our babies’ foreheads — but tomorrow, on International Kissing Day (yes that’s really a thing) I’m wondering why we have this practice in the first place?

In fact, nobody is quite sure. Anthropologists are divided on the origins of kissing. Some believe it’s an instinctive, intuitive habit, while another school of thought says it’s a learned behaviour. Even then, the genesis isn’t clear — kissing may have evolved from prospective partners sniffing one another’s faces, or from the practice of “kiss-feeding” whereby mothers pass chewed food into the mouths of their babies. The first written mention of kissing is in India’s Vedic Sanskrit texts (1500BC) and as for Europe, it’s believed that the practice of kissing was spread by the Romans as they conquered their empire.